Jennifer Saunders thinks 'Absolutely Fabulous' wouldn't be made today due to cancel culture.
Jennifer Saunders
The 62-year-old comedian - who wrote and starred in the hit 1990s sitcom - has claimed the show would never have made it to TV screens in case it offended viewers.
Speaking at an event at the Garrick Theatre, she said: “What p****s me off? Quite a lot of stuff actually. I get p****d off by people and gentle criticism all the time. This is a modern thing, isn’t it? If someone says something it always has to be, ‘Oh, but sorry, you can’t say that’. I say, ‘Oh f*** off’.
“It’s not a crime to have an opinion or say something. It is always petty and small-mindedness that p*** me off — bigotry and small-mindedness.”
Jennifer played boozy PR guru Edina Monsoon opposite Joanna Lumley’s fellow hell-raiser Patsy Stone from 1994 to 2004 but she believes the pair would have talked themselves out of cracking certain jokes as people are too "sensitive".
She explained: “I think it has changed comedy like what we used to make. I think we would probably talk ourselves out of most of it now. It would be like, ‘We won’t have a good answer so let’s not do that’.
"I think people do talk themselves out of stuff now because everything is sensitive. It stops a lot of the fun, maybe, like jokes. I remember jokes. Silly jokes.”
However, the comedy legend says she faced far worse in the 80s when she received sexist comments whilst onstage with Dawn French.
She recalled: “There were not many female acts then. One night it was a really lousy crowd. We went on and someone shouted, ‘Get your t out’. Dawn stopped and said, ‘Right. No. Stop it. Lights up. Who’s that? Now sit down and stop it’.
"And there was just silence and they stopped it and afterwards they came and apologised and it was the river police on a stag party. I felt very safe after that. Dawn does not take any nonsense.”
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